


Thermal Acclimation

by Claudia_flies



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Smut, If You Squint - Freeform, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Massage, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Silly Boys, Touch-Starved, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 01:38:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6100587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claudia_flies/pseuds/Claudia_flies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It starts innocently enough. </i>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <i>Steve knows that while the arm is balanced into Bucky’s skeleton with adamantium and vibranium fusing, it still sometimes aggravates the muscles of his back. Not badly and never to the level of pain he had been used to with Hydra, but enough to make him shift and stretch on the couch.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thermal Acclimation

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Мануальная терапия](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12960708) by [Licht_Macabre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Licht_Macabre/pseuds/Licht_Macabre)



> I needed a bit of a palate cleanser before writing the next chapter of [The River](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5841925), so here you are. Porn for the masses! ;)
> 
> Thank you to the lovely [Annie](http://definitelyannie.tumblr.com/) who helped with the Russian in the fic!

It starts innocently enough.

Steve knows that while the arm is balanced into Bucky’s skeleton with adamantium and vibranium fusing, it still sometimes aggravates the muscles of his back. Not badly and never to the level of pain he had been used to with Hydra, but enough to make him shift and stretch on the couch. Adjusting his position every ten minutes or so.

“Your shoulder bothering you again?”

Bucky shrugs.

“Come on, let me.”

Steve throws a few cushions on the floor between his feet and Bucky gives him a dubious look. He pats the cushions and wiggles his fingers.

“Come on buddy, I promise magic super soldier fingers.”

Bucky barks out a laugh shaking his head but settles to sit between Steve’s spread out legs none the less.

Bucky’s still not comfortable being touched, Steve knows. He is happy with handshakes or sparring, combat contact, but anything beyond gets him shifting and trying to gracefully move away. Except with Steve, Steve can throw his arm around Bucky’s shoulder and not be pushed away, or find Bucky shifting next to him on the couch until their thighs are touching and stay there until the end of a movie.

He wonders sometimes if Bucky misses touching people, if that is why is he sometimes so keen to sit so close by in the evenings in their flat, with noises of modern day Brooklyn drifting in from the window.

Slowly, Steve places his palms over Bucky’s shoulders, just letting the warmth spread into the tense muscles. One of the benefits of his body now running hot. He starts with the trapezius, placing his thumbs where the muscles connect to the back of Bucky’s head. He rubs over the hairline, some strands escaping the messy bun Bucky had pulled his hair into.

“Let me know if I’m going too hard on you.”

Bucky just grunts in response.

The muscles are stiff at first, and Bucky’s posture remains rigid, back straight and eyes still staring straight ahead at the flickering screen.

Steve works his thumbs down the back of Bucky’s neck to the top of the spine, moving to massage the long line of the trapezius over the shoulder. The cotton of Bucky’s t-shirt gives him a decent hold on the kinks and sore spots.

Slowly, over the duration of the movie, Bucky’s head starts to loll, his arms sagging over Steve’s bare feet one metal and one flesh. When the credits roll Steve taps Bucky gently on the shoulder.

“Alright, buddy, all done.”

It only makes Bucky slump backward, head coming to rest on Steve’s sweat-pant clad thigh. His eyes are closed, mouth relaxed and blissed out.

Steve doesn’t want to force him to move, it’s so rare to see him relaxed, at ease and resting. Steve lets the next program load on their Netflix queue and leans back, fingers gentle in Bucky’s hair, combing it back from his forehead. Bucky huffs contently and rubs his cheek against Steve’s fabric clad leg and stills into sleep.

It repeats every few weeks or so. Bucky shifting, Steve throwing cushions on the floor. Bucky falling asleep in some undignified heap on the floor, his head in Steve’s lap.

Steve knows that what they do is pushing the borders of friendship, of how men should be with each other, but Bucky has so few opportunities for gentle human contact that he would hate to not be able to offer this for his friend. He tells himself that it doesn’t matter how much he enjoys the feel of Bucky’s heavy body against his own, likes seeing the blissed out relaxation on his face and knowing that Steve was the one to put it there. He tells himself that this is something that he is doing for Bucky’s sake. And he nearly believes it.

After a particularly brutal fight in Alaska Bucky doesn’t even wait for the movie to properly start.

“Could you… Could you do it to where the arm joins?”

He is not looking at Steve, facing again stiffly to the screen. He seems almost embarrassed to be asking, maybe fearing that Steve would turn him down. It’s the first time he has asked outright, before it has always been Steve offering, throwing pillows on the floor in invitation.

Steve feels warmth spreading in his chest, in his belly at the show of trust, that Bucky feels like he can ask something for himself. Something that he enjoys.

“Sure thing, Buck. You want to take your shirt off so that I can see what I’m doing? I want to make sure that I don’t hurt you.”

Bucky pulls off his sweater and t-shirt. Settling into his usual seat.

Steve eyes the scar tissue that surrounds where the metal fuses with flesh. It’s a bit beyond his knowledge, but Bucky wouldn't let anyone else this close to his back, and Steve assumes that the muscles around the socket haven’t been augmented too much.

Looking closer the skin looks rough and dry, irritated. Steve runs the pads of his fingers over the seam of the socket and Bucky shivers. Steve lays a warm palm over the skin, feeling the cool metal and heated skin.

“Hold on a sec.”

Steve dashes to the bathroom, trying to give Bucky a reassuring smile as he goes. He picks up a lotion bottle from the under-the-sink cabinet and returns to his place on the couch, legs bracketing Bucky’s shoulders, waving the bottle in his hands.

“I’m gonna use this, don’t want to irritate the scar tissue with just dry fingers.”

Bucky nods, his face still stubbornly fixed to the screen.

Steve warms the lotion between his hands before starting to work on the shoulder. The tissue feels much more pliable with the lotion and Bucky lets out these little huffing breaths every time his fingers run over the scar tissue right next to the metal.

Steve adds in more lotion and works it into the scars as much as he is working on the muscles. It’s worst around the socket of the arm. Large parts of Bucky’s back is covered is some kind of scar tissue. Most of them are faded and flat, barely noticeable but Steve feels them under his hands as he moves over Bucky’s skin.

Bucky doesn’t seem to mind the touch, so Steve lets his hand become bolder, giving the skin a good rub. He moves down to Bucky’s shoulder blade and around to his lats, spreading his fingers gently over the ribs there, just feeling Bucky breathe for a moment.

Bucky’s head is already dropping, his chin against his chest. The lotion makes his fingers slide over the skin with ease, allowing for longer continuous movements. Steve eases his thumb under Bucky’s shoulder blade, gentling the muscles there, and Bucky lets out a sound between a moan and a sigh.

“You alright, buddy?”

A grunt.

“Yeah… keep going.”

Over the weeks Steve has started to understand the sounds. Grunts mean yes. Little huffs of breath mean something feels good. Hitched moans mean that Steve will have to spend the next five minutes working that exact spot.

At the end Bucky is always boneless, his head lolling dreamily against Steve’s thigh, pressed tight into Steve’s body, searching for comfort or heat.

“Come on, Buck, get back on the couch, you’ll be more comfortable.”

A shake of head.

“No.”

Steve pulls the blanket from the back of couch and throws it over Bucky’s prone form. He shouldn’t be cold, especially after Steve just got all the muscles on his upper back to relax. Bucky dozes against him, the heavy weight of his metal shoulder pressed tightly against Steve’s cock which is taking more than a passing interest in the proceedings. He just hopes the metal doesn’t have too sophisticated of a touch sense to it.

He’s wanted Bucky as long as he can remember, as long as he had known what wanting another person was. He’s never said anything, grateful enough that Bucky was in his life back then. And now, now he is grateful enough that Bucky seems to be starting to rebuild himself. Steve is not selfish enough to throw his own issues onto his friend who is already fighting way too many everyday battles.

He just hopes that Bucky wouldn’t judge him for enjoying the closeness, the same way he never seemed to resent the cold nights he had to warm Steve by wrapping close under the bed covers in their freezing tenement flat. But sometimes in the quiet of his bedroom, it’s not hard to imagine Bucky making those sounds in Steve’s bed, his cock in Steve’s mouth. Bucky letting Steve take care of him in all the ways that he really wants to.

Steve looks into massage oils on the internet and is not really sure what to buy. They all seem to be related to sex in some way. He asks Natasha who just gives him a look and walks away.

She comes back to him two days later and throws him a bag.

“Jesus Rogers, this is genuinely the last time.”

Steve is sure that there is a hint of a smile in her voice.

They start migrating to working on Bucky’s whole back, with him lying on the couch and Steve kneeling on the floor. Sometimes they even forget to hit play on Netflix.

Steve loves this position, it allows him to see Bucky’s face as he works. Bucky likes to angle it just past the edge of the couch, hanging down and allowing him to breathe freely. He watches as Bucky’s expression transforms from tight and controlled to blissed out and spacey just from the feel of Steve’s hands on his back.

The oil Natasha got smells faintly like sandalwood. It’s slicker and warmer between his palms than the lotion. Bucky hums in pleasure the first time Steve uses in, fingers sliding up and down the long path of his spine, from tail to tip. From then on, running his hands parallel to Bucky’s spine always gets the loudest moans and sighs, and a little wiggle of his ass that Steve pretends not to notice.

On these evenings Steve will crawl into his bed, breathe in the scent of sandalwood and Bucky from his hands and fist his cock, trying to come as quietly as possible, mindful of the ex-assassin in the room next door. He feels ashamed after, but not enough to stop. He isn’t hurting anyone and Bucky will never have to find out.

Steve is keeping the massages, while not strictly platonic, they crossed that bridge a while ago he thinks, but at least friendly and not overtly sexual. And Bucky seems to be getting pleasure from the closeness, the human contact. Sometimes Steve just holds his hands, fingers spread wide, over Bucky’s ribs and feels him breathing, steady and sure. It comforts him in a way that he can’t explain, reminding him that Bucky is here. With him.

Then one evening Bucky asks midway through _Brave_ :

“Can you do it in the bedroom.”

He never looks at Steve when he is asking, and Steve wants to encourage any and every request that Bucky makes for himself. Even if the idea of touching Bucky so intimately in his bed makes his inside squirm and heat gather in his lower belly.

“Uh… Sure, Buck.”

Bucky nods, solemn and happy.

“So I can sleep after.”

It makes sense. The floor or even the couch is not particularly comfortable for post massage napping. Bucky doesn’t even wait for Steve to turn off the TV, he just gets up and disappears down the hall into his bedroom. Steve turns off the TV, straightens the cushions, turns off the lights. Stalling.

“Steve?”

Unsure question from the hall and Steve shakes himself. This is for Bucky. He needs to get a hold of himself. He grabs the oil from the coffee table and follows Bucky down the hall where he is still waiting in the open doorway of his room.

Bucky pulls off his shirt, leaving him only his low-slung sweatpants, and falls face first into the bed. It’s still unmade from the night before. Steve sometimes wonders if Bucky’s current messiness is some kind of anti-reaction to the compartmentalization of the winter soldier.

Secretly Steve doesn’t mind the rumpled duvet and sheets, they smell of sleep and Bucky, as he climbs to kneel on the back of Bucky’s thighs.

He starts from Bucky’s neck and shoulders, as usual, paying special attention to the scars around the metal socket. It makes Bucky shift on the bed, his ass pushing against Steve’s crotch, the motion making Steve’s dick pay attention, already heavy and fat between his legs. He shifts lower and rises higher on his knees, away from Bucky and he makes the ass-wiggle again and whines.

“Okay, okay. I’ll get to it.”

Steve can’t help but smile. He wonders if Bucky is aware of how well he has learned to read the very specific body language Bucky engages in during the massages.

He pours oil onto the dip of Bucky’s lower back and runs the heels of his palms up to the nape of his neck and then back down circling around Bucky’s shoulder blades. Easy and firm, long strokes. Bucky huffs and moans, locks of long hair falling over his face as he rubs against the sheets.

Steve works over Bucky’s lats with the flat of his palms, running down to almost down to his hips and then curving back up. His thumbs sliding over the obliques and the iliac crest, working slowly towards Bucky’s spine.

“Lower.”

He slides down to Bucky’s tailbone, fingers already sliding under the waistband of his sweatpants as he works the muscles, just grazing the top of Bucky’s ass.

“Lower.”

“Uh… Buck.”

Steve can feel his face redden and his cock twitch. Bucky wiggles and grunts again.

“Lower.”

Then he angles his hips up in a manner that can only be considered lewd.

Steve closes his eyes for a second and sends up a prayer that he isn’t about to do the worst mistake of his life. He hooks his fingers in the waistband of Bucky’s sweats and slides them over the swell of his buttocks, leaving the fabric hugging his upper thighs.

Steve wants nothing else but to bury his face between Bucky’s ass cheeks and never come up for air. Instead, he works his hands around the swell of the muscle, finding where his hip flexors connect and rubbing the tensions out. Bucky grunts and pushes his ass into Steve’s hands. He finds a particularly sore spot on the right side, near Bucky’s hip that causes Bucky to twitch, his leg spasming against the inside of Steve’s knee.

Another ass wiggle and Steve moves back to the dip of Bucky’s back, letting his hands rest, exerting a bit of pressure and heat. Then sliding lower, letting the palms of his hand cup the swell of Bucky’s buttocks, his thumbs resting on Bucky’s tailbone. Moving slowly up and down, dipping lower and lower, the oil making the motion slick and easy.

Steve is about ready to tap out when Bucky flexes his hips, spreads his legs as much as the elastic of the sweatpants allows, his intentions clear.

“Lower.”

Steve lets his thumbs slide to the top of Bucky’s crack as if asking a question and Bucky moans, long and insistent.

Slowly, oh so slowly Steve slides his thumbs into the valley of Bucky’s ass. It’s slick and hot, the oil running down from his lower back. Steve’s fingers skim the pucker of Bucky’s asshole and he grunts, angling his hips into Steve’s fingers again.

It’s surprisingly easy to slide a thumb into Bucky’s body, past the tight ring. Steve’s so far gone now, past any point of turning back, and Bucky seems to know that he wants. And Steve, Steve will always helplessly try and give Bucky whatever he asks for.

Bucky arches off the bed, working himself against Steve’s hand, grunting and moaning against the sheets. His hole is tight and hot around Steve’s thumb, and Steve’s cock is leaking in his sweatpants, a wet spot forming on the fabric. Steve wonders if he could just come from this, the feel of Bucky’s body wrapped around a single finger.

“More.”

“Uh… You want another finger?”

“Yeah. More.”

Steve slides his forefinger in, next to his thumb and Bucky lets out a broken groan.

Steve lets his free hand run over Bucky’s sweaty lower back, rubbing circles into the skin, trying to remember in his haze of arousal what kind of touch Bucky really liked. He fucks his fingers in and out of Bucky’s body, slow and gentle wanting to make Bucky feel as good as possible, curving his finger, grazing Bucky’s prostate. Bucky yells into the mattress, his back arching, and hips bowing off the bed.

“Fuck, fuck, Steve.”

Bucky shoves his hand under his body and into his sweats, starting to jerk his cock. His head rolling against his bent forearm, mouth open, tempting little grunts escaping on each exhale.

Steve feels undone. Bucky is open and wanton under his hands, giving and offering everything he has ever dreamed of. He isn’t even completely aware of speaking until the words escape him:

“Oh, god, Bucky, can I… Can I fuck you, please?”

Bucky moans, his whole body shuddering.

“Yeah, yeah, shit. Steve.”

Steve pulls down Bucky’s sweats to his knees, his thumb and forefinger still buried deep in Bucky’s spasming asshole.

Bucky pushes himself up on his knees and Steve can now clearly see his hand grasped around his huge, angry red cock, the head glistening with pre-come.

Steve pulls down his own pants, cock springing free. He’s never been this hard in his entire life. Not even that summer when he was fifteen and Bucky had stayed over, slept in his bed half naked in the summer heat.

He rummages for the massage oil from within the rumbled covers, dousing his cock and dribbling it down the valley of Bucky’s ass, pushing the oil in with his fingers. Bucky cants his hips into Steve’s fingers chanting _come on, come on, come on_ over and over.

Steve tries to breathe, squeezing the base of his dick, trying to resist the temptation of blowing his load over Bucky’s glistening back. Bucky’s hole quivers against the head of Steve’s cock, wet and slick and tight and hungry as Steve pushes in.

“Bucky. Bucky.”

His voice is broken and needy and Bucky is so tight and hot around him. He wiggles his ass, and for a brief, hysterical moment Steve wonders if this is what Bucky had been asking for every time he had done the wiggle. Then he has to stop thinking because Bucky fucks back onto his cock, moaning and gasping Steve’s name.

“Slow down Buck... I’m can’t… I’m gonna...”

His hands are sweaty on Bucky’s hips, finger sliding to touch where they are joined, over the slick rim of Bucky’s hole. Bucky cries out, moaning and laughing.

“Yeah, that’s the idea, Steve.”

He works himself onto Steve’s dick with a single-minded focus, the muscles in his ass clenching and fluttering. Steve grabs hold of Bucky’s hips, forcing him to slow down. Bucky swears and moans against the metal of his forearm, trying to fight Steve’s iron grip.

“Fuck, Steve. Please.”

Steve forces himself to go slow, trying to find that spot inside that makes Bucky wail and his breath hitch. He wants to make Bucky feel good. Everything else has been burned from his brain, except for that. Make Bucky feel good.

Finally he finds the right angle and Bucky starts to cry out, desperate and pleading. He comes with a wordless cry, his metal fist in his mouth, asshole gripping Steve’s cock like a vice. Steve lets himself go, fucking into Bucky’s body hard and fast. His hand sliding up Bucky’s spine and on his shoulder, thumb resting on the seam of metal and flesh.

He comes buried to the hilt with Bucky’s name on his lips, fingers digging bruises on the side of Bucky’s ass.

They both collapse on the bed in a heap, skin slick with oil, sweat and come. Bucky’s rucked up sheets welcome and soft around them. Bucky turns around, his face open and blissed out, smiling wide and happy. He grabs a hold of Steve’s shoulder and hauls him into a kiss.

Bucky’s lips are soft, his tongue teasing on Steve’s lower lip. Steve sighs into his mouth, trying to convey his relief and love and all the things he has no words for into the kiss.

Bucky slides his lips form the kiss and over Steve’s cheek, kissing up his nose and forehead. He breathes against Steve’s hair, pulling Steve’s body closer to his own.

“Jesus Steve, I thought you were never gonna get the hint.”

Steve can hear the smile in his voice, the teasing tone he has not heard since they called a dirty tenement flat in Brooklyn home. He runs his hands over Bucky’s back, pulling him impossibly closer.

“Natasha bought me the massage oil.”

“Yeah, паучок told me. She got you the sex oil, you know.”

Steve buries his face into Bucky’s shoulder trying to hide his blush. And his giddy smile.

“Jerk.”

Bucky looks down, straight into Steve’s eyes and his face is shining with love and all the things Steve has no words for.

“Love you too, punk.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. :)
> 
> паучок = the little spider

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art: Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13796862) by [mekare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mekare/pseuds/mekare)




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